8

TUESDAY, 10:45 P.M. TO WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14, 12:35 A.M.

The early editions of the tabloids were full of the story. The Mirror thought it more important than the war and its front page blared: “Banker Slain in Girl’s Flat!” The News had had, one could suspect, a short, unhappy struggle with its conscience. War remained dominant. But the untimely death of George Merle captured the third page and was complete with diagram, including an outline drawing of Merle’s sprawled body. It was the body of a man, and it was clothed, but it was after all a body. There was an inset cut of Mary Hunter and in the caption the News asked itself a question. “Why,” the News inquired, “did millionaire banker visit pretty widow of Naval hero?” The News did not reply, but it managed to smirk slightly. There, its story indicated—its story in double column, with appropriately double authorship—there was a question it could answer, and it would.

But whatever lay between the lines, the lines themselves were irreproachable and naive. Mr. Merle had been a banker of great wealth and, as was natural under circumstances so auspicious, almost notorious probity. He was indefatigable in good works; he was at once devout and philanthropic, as much vestryman as company director. It was inconceivable that anyone could have wished him ill and, so wishing him, planted three .38 calibre slugs in his chest. The News was chagrined at what the world was coming to, even while it gloated over what had come to Page 3. It had even managed a hurried editorial in which, with the dexterity of long practice, it indicated without precisely saying so—without, indeed, precisely saying anything whatever—that the tragedy reported on Page 3 was only what one could expect in a country which, for three Presidential terms, had seethed with deliberately fanned class hatred. “Is This A Warning?” the News asked itself, editorially. It seemed to the News that probably it was.

The Norths scanned the papers as the Buick, sedate now and obedient to traffic signals, ambled toward the Weigand apartment in the Murray Hill district. They scanned them in glimpses under street lights, and they read Bill Weigand excerpts from time to time. Between excerpts, Bill switched the radio to the broadcast band and a bell rang. The Times told in measured sentences of the world at war. At the end it admitted a minor note. “The police have just announced,” the Times said, “the suicide of Oscar Murdock, business associate of the late George Merle, who was questioned earlier this evening in connection with Mr. Merle’s murder this afternoon in a Madison Avenue apartment.” The Times did not amplify and returned to the headline war news for the benefit of any who, not punctual to his hourly rendezvous with history, might have tuned in late. The Times let the implications lie as they would, which was heavily.

Weigand stopped the Buick in front of the apartment and flicked off the radio. He sat for a moment, a little wrinkle in his forehead, and then moved quickly. He led the Norths into the building and the elevator; he led them into his own apartment on the fifth floor. He did not even pause for more than a smile at Dorian, looking up suddenly from the drawing pad in her lap, turning suddenly in her chair as Pam North said something to Jerry—something to indicate presence on the scene and the intrusion of outsiders. Pam North deeply believed, not without evidence, that there was no telling what married people would say to each other when they thought they were alone. She remembered one time—She put the memory back in safe-keeping and thought of other things.

Bill was at the telephone. Already he was talking crisply to Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley. The crispness showed through the politeness.

“Right,” he said. “Then you haven’t told them different? It’s still suicide?” He waited. “I know, Inspector,” he said. “I know. Yes, I should have. Yes.” He waited again. “The point is,” he said, “why not play it that way, now that we’ve gone this far? It will get the story out of our hair for a day or two. It looks as if we were supposed to think it was suicide. It looks—” He broke off, listening. His face looked tired. But when he managed to get in again his voice was not tired.

“Right,” he said. “But here’s what I’d like to do, with the things the way they are. Let the killer think he’s fooled us. Let him think he’s pinned it on Murdock. Let him have his little laugh. Maybe he’ll be laughing so hard he won’t see us coming. And then we tell the newspaper boys sure, we planned it that way right along—a sp—a trap to catch woodcocks.”

He paused and listened. He smiled slightly.

“I know,” he said. “They’ll burrow under anything, Inspector.” He listened further. “That’s tough,” he said. “All of it? That’s sure tough.” He made faces over the telephone at the other three. His face straightened. “No,” he said, “they haven’t got much to do with it, Inspector.” The inspector rumbled.

“Right,” he said. “I think you’ve got something there, Inspector. We’ll let it ride along as is for a while, anyway. And meantime I’ll keep on it. Right?” The telephone rumbled. “Right,” Bill said. He put the telephone down and looked at it. He looked up from it at his wife and the Norths.

“The inspector thinks we’d better not tell the press it wasn’t suicide,” he reported gravely. “The inspector’s got an idea there’s no use telling the killer, how much we know.” He barely smiled. “He also,” he added, “thinks woodcocks are woodchucks. They’ve been eating his broccoli. How are all the pretty pictures?”

The last was to Dorian Weigand. She showed him pretty pictures of tall girls in new clothes, pictures of tall girls in new clothes being Dorian Weigand’s occupation. Bill Weigand smiled at them blissfully, as one might smile at genius. Dorian looked over his bent head, her lips curled in a smile, her greenish eyes lively under long lashes.

“I,” she said. “Think he’s sweet. Don’t you? He thinks I’m—oh, Cézanne.”

Bill took hold of her head, ostensibly by the ears. He shook it slightly and let it go.

“Why not?” he said. “You think I’m Sherlock.” He looked at her. “I hope,” he added.

Pam North turned to Jerry.

“Dr. Watson, I presume,” she said.

Jerry agreed solemnly.

“Of course, Mrs. Watson,” he said. “Fancy meeting us here.”

“I’ll get you drinks,” Dorian promised, pushing Bill back so she could stand up. She walked across the room toward the kitchen and Bill looked at her with admiration. He looked at the Norths and did not hide his admiration. They smiled at him, agreeing. Nobody said anything. They sat down in familiar chairs and, by unspoken agreement, did not begin until Dorian came back with a tray. It was a big tray and she was not big, but she carried it easily, with grace. She mixed without orders, calling off—Pam, a little rye and lots of water; Jerry, some scotch and not so much water; Bill, scotch and soda. “Me, scotch and soda too, like Bill.” She smiled at him.

“It was because he wouldn’t let her marry Josh,” Pam said, beginning in the middle. “Or Josh marry her, which is the same thing, of course. Because he hated her father, but she doesn’t know why. Mary Hunter, I mean.”

“What was because of that, Pam?” Bill asked her, and Dorian looked from one to another, her eyes wide.

“That was why she said, she said he ought to die,” Pam explained. “That’s why she’s so frightened. Because she said that to him, and then he did die. In her apartment.”

Bill looked interested. He said, “Oh?” and looked at Jerry North. Jerry reached across the little space between their chairs and captured one of Pam’s hands. He said to let him tell it; let him, anyway, put a foundation under it. He told Dorian and Bill about the interview in the big house on Long Island between a slight girl in white and an implacable man behind a heavy desk. He told what had led up to that interview, as far as they knew it, and what came after.

“She left after she said that—that about thinking George Merle ought to die,” he said. “She left without seeing Josh Merle. She went home and waited for him to call—waited for him to tell her it didn’t matter what his father said or what his father did—that nothing and nobody could stop their getting married. Only—well, the kid didn’t call. He didn’t call that night or the next day—he just never did call.”

“And so,” Pam said, “she decided he cared most about the money and she wrote him a letter—one letter—saying—well, saying he cared most about the money. And he didn’t answer that. And that winter he went into the Navy as an aviation cadet after Pearl Harbor and quite a while later Mary met Rick Hunter and married him and he went off and got killed. Only I think she loved Josh all the time, except that of course she hated him too. And she hated his father, I guess.”

Bill sat thinking it over, his face remote.

“He just—dropped her?” he said. “When papa said no more dough? Just like that—is that what you gathered?”

“Just like that,” Jerry told him.

“Of course,” Pam said, “it doesn’t mean they didn’t meet again—things like that. I mean—oh, neither of them was walled up, or anything. They both kept on going around. I gather they met but—but not to talk to each other. Not really to talk.”

“And if he had a side of it?” Bill said. “Just to get it straight.”

“What side?” Pam wanted to know.

Bill Weigand shrugged slightly. He pointed out that they didn’t know what Josh Merle’s father might have told Josh.

“You make it sound—oh, like the cruel parent in something or other,” Pam said.

So, Bill pointed out, did she. And, he added, cruel parents sometimes got killed. In stories.

“And for that matter,” he added, “out of stories.”

“For revenge?” Pam said. “Really, Bill.”

“Even for revenge,” Bill told her. “For all kinds of reasons, people kill. But I wasn’t thinking of that—or, at any rate, not primarily of that. You could work it out another way.”

“Could you?” Jerry said. “I don’t—.” He broke off. He broke off because Pam was looking at him and shaking her head.

“Oh, yes, Jerry,” she said. “Oh, yes you could. We may as well admit it, even if it isn’t true. Because now she’s a widow.”

Jerry said, “Oh.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Now she’s a widow—now she could marry Josh. God, what a name!”

Pam shook her head at him. She said lots of people had it.

“Only,” she said, “maybe not people you fall in love with much. I’ll give you that. And get the money.”

“Right,” Bill said, and was faintly surprised at his readily understanding. “Suppose she thought she could hit it off with Josh again, now that she was—older—more experienced. And free again. Suppose she—well, loved him in a fashion, wanted to prove to herself that she couldn’t just be ditched—and wanted money. And the only thing in the way would be the boy’s father. And now—well, now he isn’t in the way. And now he can’t cut Josh off with—what is it?—a shilling. Now Josh won’t have to choose between her and the money. He can have both. As, taking it the other way, so can she. Which gives her a motive.”

“And,” Pam pointed out, “him. Two fine motives. But why the other man with the funny name—Oswald something? Why kill him?”

“Because,” Bill said, “Oscar—not Oswald—Murdock knew something. That made a good enough reason.”

“Or,” Jerry suggested, “because it was convenient.”

The others waited. Jerry’s voice was faintly doubtful as he amplified.

“Suppose,” he said, “that the murderer knew Murdock was under suspicion. He was, wasn’t he?”

Bill Weigand thought it over. He agreed you might call it that.

“Vague suspicion,” he said. “And chiefly after I had talked to his girl—Laurel. Before that I was just—call it—curious.”

“All right,” Jerry said. “Call it merely curious. But the murderer didn’t need to know that. He might have thought you were—oh, hot on his trail. Baying at his heels.”

“He doesn’t,” Dorian said firmly. “Did you ever hear him, Pam?”

Bill shook his head at her. He nodded it at Jerry.

“And,” Jerry went on, “decide that Murdock was made to order as a fall guy. Suspected by the police, Murdock kills himself. Neater, that way. The chase is ended. The case is solved. The police forget the whole thing. The murderer sleeps soundly of nights.” Jerry paused and thought it over. “Actually,” he added, “I think that’s one of our better motives. Straightforward, simple—you kill one man; you arrange for another man to kill himself—to appear to kill himself—under circumstances which will lead the police, notoriously unbright, to accept suicide as confession.”

“And,” Bill Weigand agreed dryly, “the police live up to their bill. And the amateur saves the day.”

“Seriously,” Pam said, “seriously, I rather like it.”

Bill Weigand nodded slowly. He said he didn’t dislike it.

“And,” he said, “we have no evidence one way or the other. When we catch the man who killed Merle, we can always ask him why he killed Murdock. But merely guessing at the reason for Murdock’s murder doesn’t seem to get us anywhere.”

It would. Pam North pointed out, if they knew enough about character. If they knew who would think like that.

“Besides Jerry, of course,” she said. “Jerry doesn’t count. He was with me.” She considered that. “Anyway,” she said, “when Murdock was killed.”

Bill said they should try to keep it simple—keep it, anyway, simpler than that. Because, he said, they didn’t know enough about character—about the way people were, how they thought, what they would do.

“Because,” he said, “it comes down to guesswork—to guessing what we would do if we were in the position some one else is in. We think he would do a certain thing, for a certain reason—meaning that we think we would do that thing for that reason in his place. But we’re not even sure, most of the time, what we would do. And our guesses about other people—even people we know very well—well, they aren’t good enough.”

“I can guess what you will do,” Dorian told him. “At least, most of the time.”

He looked at her, and smiled. He said he hoped she could; he said he thought she could. Most of the time. As, he said, Pam could guess what Jerry could do and Jerry could guess—. He stopped at that, overcome by doubt.

“The funny thing,” Pam said, “is that he can. Even sometimes when I can’t. It’s disconcerting sometimes. Like eternal recurrence.”

Everybody looked at her.

“Probably,” Jerry said, “she means predestination. It makes her feel hemmed in, as if she had to do what I think she’s going to do.”

Pam said she thought “recurrence” was better. Just going around and around, over and over again, and people catching you as you came by. She said she wasn’t sure it wasn’t that way, but she hoped not. Although sometimes Jerry frightened her.

“But just as often,” she said, “he seems to be surprised, even by the simplest things. However, I don’t see where this gets us, because we’re talking about me instead of the murderer. It’s nice, of course, but it isn’t really very—very practical.”

There was a slight pause. Pam broke it.

“What we ought to decide,” she said, “is who have we got?”

Bill Weigand held his left hand up in front of him, and seemed to be looking at his nails. Slowly he pulled down the thumb with the index finger of his right hand.

“Mary Hunter,” he said. “To get Joshua and the money.” He pulled down the index finger of his left hand. “Joshua Merle,” he said. “To get Mary and the money. He rubbed his left thumb and index finger together. “Or both of them,” he said. “Like that.” He pulled down the finger next in line. He said, “Laurel Burke.”

The others looked at him in surprise. Jerry, after a moment of thought, said he thought Laurel Burke was out. On a time basis, if nothing else. Weigand shook his head.

“I stopped on the way to make some telephone calls,” he said. “It may have taken me—oh, ten minutes. And I didn’t drive fast, particularly. And when I left I took off the man who had been keeping an eye on her. If she left at once, got a cab and did drive fast, she might have been at Murdock’s room ten minutes before I got there—possibly twelve minutes. Five or seven minutes before you two got there. She kills him and gets out—the killing takes a couple of minutes, including setting the stage for suicide. It wasn’t an elaborate stage setting. She goes downstairs and sees you come in. When she’s sure you’re in Murdock’s room she calls and pretends that she thinks Murdock is still alive and that she wants to warn him.”

“Why?” Pam said.

“Why which,” Bill said. “Why murder? Why pretend?”

“Both,” Pam said. “Or either.”

As for the first, Bill Weigand said, Jerry’s theory fitted very nicely. Because Laurel Burke had made what might have been a deliberate effort to throw suspicion on Murdock. Possibly she was getting Weigand’s mind ready for confession by suicide. Why the pretense she thought Murdock still alive? Obviously because it looked good—made her appear innocent. As a matter of fact, she had identified herself, by name. Which one might think wouldn’t be necessary, since she and Murdock obviously knew each other very well indeed, and might be expected to know each other’s voices. One might think, indeed, that she would be able to tell Jerry North’s voice from Murdock’s as soon as Jerry answered the telephone.

“Look,” Pam said, “maybe she did do it.”

“Maybe,” Weigand agreed. He added that it would help to know why she had killed Merle, since they were assuming that whoever killed Murdock killed Merle—and had an original reason to kill Merle, rather than Murdock. He paused and smiled faintly.

“Of course,” he said, “we could make it even more intricate, if we wanted to. Suppose the whole thing was set up to kill Murdock—to give Murdock a reason for suicide so that murder would be accepted as suicide. In that event, Merle isn’t a victim, exactly—really, Merle is a motive.”

“That,” Pam said, “is worse than anything I ever thought up. Much worse. As a motive for murder—well—.”

Bill Weigand smiled slightly and admitted he wasn’t betting on it. But he added that motives were, at the best, odd things—what was a motive for one person wasn’t a motive for another. What would hardly irritate one person would lead another to murder—and murder the hard way. Money was a simple motive—but the amount of money was unpredictable. Murder had happened for a few dollars; a gang of men had once spent weeks murdering a strangely resistant vagrant for five hundred dollars of insurance money. And a doctor had once been accused of trying to murder quite a large family so that his wife would inherit the family money—and not very much money. Men had killed other men who laughed at them, or who threatened to make them so ridiculous that others would laugh. It was difficult to think of any motive which would persuade some people to murder; an almost imperceptible flick to self-esteem or self-interest might turn other people into killers. That was academic—he was not prepared to argue, at least not for very long, that Merle had been killed to set the stage for the primary murder of Oscar Murdock.

But they could, if they went to a little trouble, easily suppose a motive for Laurel Burke’s murder of the banker—as a primary murder. There might be any number of motives hidden in the relationships between Laurel, Merle and Murdock—hidden because they knew so far only as much of those relationships as Laurel and, to a lesser degree, Murdock himself, had let drop. Even what they knew or could guess at would supply a motive of sorts.

“Suppose,” he said, “that she was shaking Merle down—with or without Murdock’s aid. Suppose Merle went there to see her and she went to meet him, expecting a payoff. But suppose he didn’t pay—suppose, instead, he threatened her. Suppose he threatened her with the police. Or, if Murdock wasn’t in it, suppose he threatened her with Murdock. She’s a fairly violent b—girl. Maybe she got mad and began pulling the trigger. Suppose she shot Murdock because he knew she was there—maybe he knew she was going there, maybe he happened to come in in time to catch her, or just happened to be passing and saw her leave.”

Jerry was shaking his head.

“The trouble with all this is,” he said, “that the Murdocks didn’t live there any more—either Murdock. Mary Hunter lived there. And Murdock knew it because he had rented her the apartment.”

Bill nodded and said that was a catch. He said that was another thing about which they didn’t know enough. At the moment, it was evidently an argument that Murdock had not written the note which apparently took Merle to the apartment. It was also an argument against Laurel Burke’s being in the apartment, because she, presumably, also knew it had been rented. At least she knew she had moved out. They would know more about that when—and if—they found the typewriter on which the note had been typed. That would take time.

“For one thing,” he pointed out—“for one nice initial complication—it could be practically any typewriter at the Madison Avenue Bank and Trust Company. Murdock would have had access there—he could have given access to Laurel. Joshua Merle could have used a typewriter there if he’d wanted.”

Bill stopped and looked sad.

“And so,” he said, “could probably hundreds of other people. So it will use up time. And there is no particular reason to think that the typewriter is in the bank at all.”

He sighed. He looked at the fingers he still held up. He drew down another. And another. And another.

“The antique man,” he said. “Because he was annoyed at Merle for not buying the chair. Because Merle knew he made artificial antiques and threatened to expose him.”

“Did he?” Pam said.

Bill nodded.

“The elevator man,” he said. “Who rather oddly didn’t hear Mary Hunter scream—if she did scream. Weldon Jameson.”

“Who—?” Dorian said a little helplessly. “People keep coming in.”

Josh’s friend, Bill Weigand explained. A good-looking youngster a couple of years younger than Joshua Merle; apparently a devoted friend; apparently, like Merle, a washed-out flyer who had cracked up in an accident of some sort. What sort—and what the two young men had done in the Navy generally—was being looked up.

“Why?” Pam wanted to know.

Bill shrugged.

“Do you,” he said, “want me to run up a motive? I could, I suppose. Arbitrarily—I haven’t evidence to indicate any motive. Maybe he wanted to give his friend a hand up—get him the money and the girl. Maybe old Merle had done something else he didn’t like—you see, we haven’t anything to go on.”

“Or,” Pam said, “any place to go, I shouldn’t think. In that direction. How about Mary’s father—Mr.—what was his name, Jerry?”

“Thorgson,” Jerry said. “Why?”

“Because,” Pam said, “Merle had done him out of some money somehow. Which was why Merle hated him and wouldn’t let his daughter marry his son. Damn!” She stopped and they looked at her. “Relatives,” she said. “Not people relatives—pronoun relatives. Wouldn’t let Thorgson’s daughter marry his, Merle’s son. And so Thorgson murdered Merle.”

“Except,” Jerry said mildly, “except for one thing, Pam, that sounds fine. The thing is—Thorgson’s dead. Isn’t he?”

Pam said, “Oh.”

“Oh, of course,” she said. “I could have liked him—as a murderer, I mean. Is there anybody else?”

“Probably,” Bill said. “Hundreds, probably. Persons unknown—persons I’ll meet tomorrow on Long Island when I go to have a look around. Persons—”

The telephone rang. Bill Weigand answered it. He listened, said, “Right” and, after another moment, “Thanks.” He hung up.

“Well,” he said, “he didn’t use his thumb. The print on the trigger—what there was of it—was of his right index finger. He was shot with the same gun used to kill Merle. Ballistics is sure of that. And the doc agrees that his right wrist was stiff from an old fracture, not very well set. Stiff enough so that it would have been awkward—but not impossible—for him to hold the gun in position to put a bullet into his own forehead. It’ wasn’t a contact wound, incidentally—the gun was held off maybe a foot. Which makes it look pretty much the way we thought it looked.”

For a few minutes nobody said anything. Then Pam said that, in a way, it was a pity, because it made things so much harder. Bill Weigand said she didn’t know how much harder, and when the others waited for him to go on he amplified.

“Because,” he said, “it’s easier to be pretty sure we’re right than to prove we’re right. We’ve got an improbability. But we haven’t any more than that. Can you see what a defense attorney will do with it? Why do we insist that it was his client, not Murdock, who killed Merle? Why do we say Murdock didn’t kill himself when the going got tough? Because he had a stiff wrist. Oh, so he couldn’t have shot himself, is that it? It was physically impossible? Well, no. Oh, so you admit it wasn’t impossible? Then why do you decide he didn’t kill himself? Well, it would have been awkward. It would have been inconvenient. And then our defense lawyer throws up his hands and does double takes for the jury and what does the jury do?”

“The jury,” Pam North said, “decides it was Murdock after all, because what is convenience when you’re going to kill yourself? Although, as a matter of fact, I’d think it was a lot. If I were going to do it, I’d want to do it just as conveniently as possible. I’d think that awkwardness just then would be—well, almost more important than awkwardness at any other time. Because it would be so—so trivial. So anti-climactic. But would a jury?”

Nobody answered her and when, after a pause, she spoke again it was on quite a different subject.

“What I wonder is,” she said, “who got the check? The check that Mr. Merle took to the apartment?”

Maybe, Jerry suggested, he didn’t take it. Maybe that was why he got shot. Maybe the absence of the check annoyed someone. Or maybe the murderer got it and just tore it up. Pam shook her head at that. She said she had once and it had been dreadful, because it made the bank so mad. She said she had had an argument about whether she had given or sold something to someone and when the other person had insisted she had torn up the check.

“And the bank was mad,” she said. “It was mad for years.”

They all looked at her doubtfully. Finally Dorian said, mildly, that she didn’t see why the bank was mad.

“Because,” Pam said, “it upset their bookkeeping.”

Jerry ran a hand through his hair.

“Listen, Pam,” he said. “It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t possibly. A check is just a piece of paper if you tear it up. It couldn’t make the bank mad.”

“Well,” Pam said, “I don’t care what you say. It did make the bank mad. They had taken the money out of the account beforehand and so they had to wait because the check might come through and so nobody had the money—not the bank or the person who gave the check or me. It just wasn’t anywhere. I’ll admit I didn’t ever understand it, but that’s the way it was. The money just disappeared, somehow. And it was very bad for bookkeeping.”

Jerry ran his hand through his hair again.

“But—” he began. Then he stopped and a faraway look came into his eyes. He looked at Bill and Bill began to nod.

“Listen, Pam,” Jerry said. “I almost hate to ask this, but—was it a certified check?”

Pam said oh yes, it was certified all right. She said that that was one of the things the bank kept saying over and over. The bank kept saying over and over, “but it was a certified check. People don’t tear up certified checks.”

“Which,” Pam added, “was nonsense. Because as I kept telling them over and over, I had.”